The New Group

July 15, 2008-(Tuesday)- Palumpur, India

Today was our first day of summer camp with the kids at Gyan Deep. I really had a lot of fun and the new group of volunteers is so nice, I made friends immediately. My roommate is Tatiana. She is from Guatemala, but her husband is an American of German descent. He has a corporate job in China, so now she is living in China. All I can say is WOW !

I was so surprised in the class today. We were teaching the kids geography, and we asked them to name the continents. I couldn’t believe that they couldn’t even name the continents ! These are 9^th graders and up ! I couldn’t help but think how small their world is. When I was in 4^th or 5^th grade I remember seeing a map of the world and thinking “I want to go to all those places!”. I felt so sad for them because I knew that most of them would never leave Palumpur. For these children who have never been taught to ask questions, we opened the world up to them. Once they realized that they wouldn’t get punished for guessing, they asked a million questions! I was so excited! Here we were, making a small, but significant difference! After school was over, Shri, Brian, Mifa, and I thought about how we could teach them more and put together a miniature “smart classroom”. I am having so much fun with the new volunteers that I don’t want to leave. I asked Juggy if I can fly to Delhi on Friday instead of Thursday. He said he didn’t think it would be a problem. This will give me an extra day with my new friends and with the kids at Gyan Deep. I wish this group were here earlier. They are so much friendlier than the group I came with. After lunch, we took several hours coming up with ideas for tomorrow. We printed up a blank map of the world and thought we would see if they could label even a few countries, like India. China and Pakistan. It was getting close to 7:30pm, so I called Pooja’s father to make sure they were going to meet me at the hotel for dinner. Unfortunately, they couldn’t make it because they had a death in the family. Even though it wasn’t a close family member, the family had to attend the service. I was sad that I wasn’t going to get to see Pooja, but I told her that I would stop by tomorrow. After that I just ate dinner with the other volunteers. Then we played Apples to Apples, and had a blast. By 10:30, I was exhausted and went to bed… It was nice to have a roommate. Tatiana and I talked for a while before I fell asleep.